Interview with Michael Stalcup

Today, I'm thrilled and honored to be sharing an interview I did with Michael Stalcup. I was first introduced to his poetry through the Rabbit Room Poetry Substack, and I've been subscribed to his poetry Substack ever since. His poetry is grounded in the nitty-grity reality of life on earth, but also in the all-encompassing reality of God's love. I've been encouraged and inspired by his skilllful use of classical poetic devices as he addresses contemporary issues and reaches a contemporary audience. Furthermore, Mr. Michael shares my home country--I never expected to get to know another poet in Thailand!

To sign up to Mr. Michael's Substack or explore his published poems, see his website at michaelstalcup.com. He's also preparing to lead a four-week online workshop, Spirit & Scribe, to explore "the intersection of writing craft and spiritual formation."

Without further, ado--the interview!

When did you start writing poetry and what (or who) inspired you?

I started writing poetry consistently in 2017, but I’ve written the occasional poem since at least as far back as high school (the early 2000s), especially if you count songwriting.

Chris Rice’s poetry collection Widen was the spark that got me to start writing poetry in my early thirties. I was inspired by the humility of his self-proclaimed “amateur” collection and his explicit exhortation to “Create, create, create! / Rearrange the molecules / Of the already astounding universe.” My poem “Lines Last” is about how his book encouraged me to try my hand at poetry.

I draw inspiration from a wide range of poets, including the biblical prophets, 16th-17th century sonneteers, Christian Hip Hop artists, and contemporary poets.

Who are your favorite poets and why?

John Donne’s Holy Sonnets showed me how wonderfully dense and rich sonnets can be and were a big part of my falling in love with that form above all others.

Malcolm Guite is my favorite contemporary poet. From the moment I discovered him through his sonnets on the Lord’s Prayer, he has been an exemplar for me of a poet whose work is both contemporary and deeply rooted in both the poetic and biblical traditions.

But where I really fell in love with poetry (long before diving into the larger poetic tradition) was through Christian Hip Hop and its superabundance of rhyme, meter, wordplay, multivalent language, and cultural and biblical allusions—all with the goal of exalting Jesus and engaging the world from a Christian worldview. While Shakespearean sonnets and Hip Hop might feel worlds (or centuries) apart to some people, a lot of my poetic DNA comes from rappers like Sho Baraka, Lecrae, and Andy Mineo.

Your website says you write poetry at “the intersection of faith, justice, and wonder.” Could you elaborate on why you chose those three words and what exactly that "intersection" means to you?

Those three words felt like they summed up what most of my poems are about. It feels like I’m writing at the crossroads of those three emphases, with different poems heading off in different directions. Sometimes I’m sitting in wonder at God’s creation (“The Shallows”) while other times I’m lamenting injustice (“A Sonnet for Sonya Massey”), but it’s all me. And while all my work is informed by my Christian faith, I don’t explicitly name that faith in every poem; I feel free to wonder out loud about what technology is doing to us in a way that hopefully anybody can relate to (“iRemember”).

Could you share about how your faith influences your art and vice versa? (Very broad question, I know. Feel free to answer it however you’d like!)

My faith influences everything about my art and the process behind it—imperfectly, to be sure, but that’s my goal. I pray for inspiration as I form lines and choose words, I pray for guidance as I decide which poems to submit for publication where, and I pray that God would let my words be a blessing as they go out into the world. More than that, our Good Shepherd keeps me grounded in the face of all the pride, insecurity, fear, fame-seeking, and other false motivations that constantly try to trip me up as a person and a poet.

My art has been an enriching influence on my faith. Writing poetry has especially grown my appreciation for the abundant poetic elements in Scripture, from the macro (the way biblical texts poetically echo or even subvert earlier biblical passages) to the micro (like the multivalent meaning of the line “He brings me back” in Psalm 23). Poetry has helped me to grow in my understanding of Jesus as the Master artist, firmly rooted in tradition and truth while also brilliantly creative and contemporary.

You regularly use rhyme and meter in your poems, devices which have been largely discarded by contemporary poets, but you also write freestyle poetry. Do the different styles have significance to you? How do you strike the balance between writing more traditional style poetry and writing poetry that appeals to modern readers?

I try to let each poem take the form I sense will serve it best, though I do especially love formal poetry, especially sonnets. Sonnets are like cut gems. They’re the perfect size—about a minute to read, and just over 100 words—and I love the challenge of saying what I need to say within the strict confines of their brevity, rhyme, meter, and stanzaic structure. As Wendell Berry once said, “The impeded stream is the one that sings.” I really enjoy how limits push creativity, so even my unrhymed, unmetered poems tend to have some sort of structure: they’re erasures or chiastic or restricted to very few letters.

I don’t think formal elements like rhyme or meter are on the opposite side of the scale from accessibility or appeal to readers. In fact, poetry is most alive these days in song lyrics, which people naturally remember and recite precisely because of these old mnemonic devices. My hunch is that, despite many contemporary poets’ opinion that rhyme and meter are passé, everyday readers actually find a familiar comfort in the structure they provide.

Whether I’m writing free verse or formal poetry, my balancing act is more about keeping poems as accessible as I can on the surface, while still working in layers of meaning and beauty for those who read more closely. Many of my favorite Hip Hop songs are like this: they’re instantly catchy and make sense upon first listen, but thirty listens later I’m still catching allusions and wordplay that I had never noticed before. I love that.

What is your favorite poetic device?

I really enjoy multivalent language and the way it can draw connections between things, particularly between the story of Jesus and our modern world. I’ve even written a couple poems that are entirely multivalent—in other words, the exact same set of words can be read to apply equally to the story of Jesus and to more recent events.

Is there a question I haven’t asked that you would enjoy answering? If so, I’d love to have you answer it!

Thank you so much for your very thoughtful and thought-provoking questions, Eris! It has been a pleasure.

Thank you so much, Mr. Michael!